Sunday, June 16, 2013

Sisters and brothers, I think you’re familiar with the phrase carrot and stick, right? You know that it refers to a way of motivating people. A way of getting people to do what we want them to do. And to stop doing what we don’t want them to do. The technique is simple. For the things we want people to do, we wave a carrot in front of them. An incentive of some kind. Like money, for example. Or a promotion. Or a prize. For the things that we don’t want people to do, we apply the stick to discourage them. A disincentive of some kind. Like a monetary penalty. No littering. Fine, a thousand dollars. Or a restriction of privileges. If you don’t do your homework, no computer games for a week. Or even imprisonment.

Carrot and stick. Incentive and disincentive. We use this approach everywhere. At home. At work. And even in our spiritual life. In our relationship with God. Don't some of us, for example, come to Church faithfully every Sunday, just because we wish to avoid having to go to confession? Or how many of us are really anxious to find out the answer to the following question: Exactly how late can we show up at Mass before we have to come again for the next one? Or how many of us gauge our spiritual health only in terms of our own performance? Only by how well or how poorly we may be keeping the rules. And how many of us keep the rules mainly because we fear punishment? Or only because we expect some kind of reward? If not here in this world, then later, in the hereafter. How many of us, for example, become shocked and angry when bad things happen to us even though we may have done nothing seriously wrong. Even though we may have kept all the rules?

Carrot and stick. Incentive and disincentive. This approach can, of course, be very effective. Don’t many of us, for example, find ourselves buying many more things than we need, simply because they are on offer? Buy ten, get one free. But still, it’s important for us to remember that, as effective as it may be in certain situations, the carrot and stick approach does have its limitations. For one thing, it’s very task-oriented. It focuses mainly on performance. What it’s not so good at is building close relationships. This is because the technique is modelled on a particular kind of relationship. The relationship between a boss and a worker. A master and a slave. Or, what’s worse, between an animal and its owner. That is, after all, the image that the words carrot and stick bring to mind. Someone trying to get his or her mule to move by dangling a carrot in front of it. And by threatening to hit it with a stick if it doesn’t. In such a situation, even if the animal does obey. It’s not likely to have much love for the one wielding the carrot and the stick.

Carrot and stick. Incentive and disincentive. At first glance, this is also the kind of motivational technique that God seems to be using on King David in the first reading. What does God do after David commits adultery with a married woman and then kills her husband? It seems God reacts in two ways. First, by listing the incentives, the carrots, that God had dangled in front of David to gain his compliance: I anointed you king… I delivered you from Saul… I gave you the House of Israel and Judah... And, second, by brandishing a stick, a disincentive, for disobedience: So now the sword shall never be far from your House…

And yet, it also possible to read God’s reaction in a very different way. If we look more closely at the reading, it’s possible to see that God reacts to David’s sin, not so much as an angry Master, shaking a clenched fist. But more as a disappointed Friend, shedding tears of hurt and regret. I did all these things for you, God protests. I guided you. Showed you the way to peace and happiness. I treated you like my friend. But you have have rejected my help. You have spurned my friendship. And now you suffer the consequences of your wrongful actions. Angry Master? Or disappointed Friend? Which interpretation is the more accurate? At least one thing helps to convince us that it is friendship that is at work here. For instead of punishing David for his sin. Instead of applying the stick, as an angry master would. God forgives him. And the result? David’s relationship with God grows even deeper, even more intimate, than it was before. As we heard in the responsorial psalm, the one whom God forgives sees God no longer as a hard taskmaster, but as a safe refuge. A place in which to live the whole of one’s life. You are my hiding place, O Lord; you save me from distress. You surround me with cries of deliverance.

All of which should help us to understand a little better what is happening in each of the other two readings today. In the second reading, St. Paul tells us something rather shocking. He says that what makes a man righteous is not obedience to the Law, but faith in Jesus Christ. And what does the Law rely on, sisters and brothers, if not the approach of carrot and stick. The same approach that many of us rely on in the spiritual life. Whether we realise it or not. And yet, Paul is telling us that this is precisely the approach that does not work. For as Jesus himself says at the Last Supper, this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent (Jn 17:3). Eternal life is intimate knowledge of God in Christ. If this is true, then it stands to reason that the approach of carrot and stick, of incentive and disincentive, cannot save us. Even if it may motivate us to keep the rules. It cannot bring us into close relationship with God. It cannot enable us to say what Paul is able to say: I live now not with my own life but with the life of Christ who lives in me. But what does it mean then to have faith in Jesus Christ? What does it mean to live the life of Christ? How does one enter this life, if not by carrot and stick?

The gospel provides us with a useful illustration of what Paul means. Here we find a stark contrast between two ways of relating to Jesus. The first is the way of the Pharisee. The way of the Law. The way of carrot and stick. The Pharisee is, of course, an expert at keeping the Law. And yet, even though Jesus enters his home as his guest, Simon the Pharisee fails to show Jesus the proper hospitality. For all his knowledge of the Law, Simon remains distant from the Lord. Probably because he does not recognise the presence of God in him. After all, even though Jesus may work miracles and speak eloquently, he doesn’t seem careful enough about keeping all the rules.

In contrast, the unnamed woman–the one with the bad name, the intruder, the one who gatecrashes the party–somehow manages to enter into a shockingly intimate relationship with Jesus. She sheds tears over him. Cleans his feet with her hair. Kisses him with her lips. Anoints him with ointment. And, what is most important to notice, is that this intimacy does not come from the application of carrot and stick. It is not the product of a craving for reward. Or of the fear of punishment. It is born, instead, of the same things that we find in the relationship between David and God in the first reading, and between Paul and Christ in the second. Intimacy with God in Christ springs from mercy and gratitude. The mercy of God symbolised by the Cross of Christ. And the gratitude of the people of God, expressed most fully every time we gather, as we do now, to listen to the Word of God, and to share in the Bread of Life.

For us who are Christian, this is the true motivation. This is the sure way to life. This is the reliable path to peace. Not so much carrot and stick, as mercy and gratitude. Not so much our performance, as the Lord’s sacrifice. Not so much the keeping of rules and regulations, as intimate friendship with Christ. A friendship for us to enjoy. And to live. And to share with others.

Sisters and brothers, the Lord continues to extend to us his hand of Friendship. How ready are we to go beyond carrot and stick today?

4 comments:

Yup, mercy and gratitude. I'm grateful for your blog and that you became a priest. Although I must admit that I was not used to seeing you in a cassock the first time, as I knew you as a student in T-shirt and jeans.

Perhaps for God who is LOVE personified, there is no need for HIM to use the carrot and stick method with us, His children whom He loves...

yet, i suppose this would depend on our personal relationship with God and how we perceive God.

O Lord of Love and Light, as YOU continue to extend YOUR HAND OF FRIENDSHIP to us, as YOU wait patiently for us to come to YOU, please lead and guide us back into your loving embrace as a child would run into the arms of his/her loving father.

Breaking News: Ordinary Time

Apart from those seasons having their own distinctive character, thirty-three or thirty-four weeks remain in the yearly cycle that do not celebrate a specific aspect of the mystery of Christ. Rather, especially on the Sundays, they are devoted to the mystery of Christ in all its aspects. This period is known as Ordinary Time. Ordinary Time begins on Monday after the Sunday following 6 January and continues until Tuesday before Ash Wednesday inclusive. It begins again on Monday after Pentecost and ends before Evening Prayer I of the First Sunday of Advent. This is also the reason for the series of liturgical texts found in both the Roman Missal and The Liturgy of the Hours (Vol. III - IV), for Sundays and weekdays in this season.–General Norms for the Liturgical Year and Calendar, 43-44

Power in the Breaking

The Road to Emmaus

Then they said to one another, 'Did not our hearts burn within us as he... explained the scriptures to us?' They set out that instant and returned to Jerusalem... Then they told their story of... how they had recognised him in the breaking of bread. - Luke 24:32-35 (NJB)

Words at liturgy are spoken not simply or primarily for the sake of information. Words are proclaimed at liturgy so that God can do something among us for our sakes and our salvation... The power of the proclaimed word is that it causes something to occur among us. Every time we proclaim the scriptures at liturgy "they are fulfilled in [our] hearing."- Kevin W. Irwin, Models of the Eucharist

When a person is touched by the Word obedience is born, that is a listening that changes life.- Pope John Paul II, Orientale Lumen #10

(T)he meeting between God and people in liturgy may - and probably should - provoke discomfort. Rituals behave - as Jesus did in his ministry - parabolically, and hence worship is not a self-congratulatory exercise where we showcase "all the great stuff we're doing." The point of our coming together in prayer is not congratulation and comfort but challenge and change. Even when we arrive at the church doors aglow with prosperity and success, we enter only by "acknowledging our failures and asking the Lord for pardon and strength" (Order of Mass, Penitential Rite). We become a community of the forgiven. And when we mourn and lament our loss, at the funeral of a loved one, we still accept the invitation to come before God "with praise and thanksgiving" (Eucharistic Prayer I), and to acknowledge that "all your actions show your mercy and love" (Eucharistic Prayer IV).- Nathan D. Mitchell, Meeting Mystery

In the liturgy, properly celebrated, divisions along lines of sex, age, race or wealth are overcome. In the liturgy, properly celebrated, we discover the sacramentality of the material universe. In the liturgy, properly celebrated, we learn the ceremonies of respect both for one another and for the creation, that allow us to see in people and in material goods, 'fruit of the earth and the work of human hands,' sacraments of that new order which we call the justice of the kingdom of God.- John J. Egan, quoted in Keith F. Pecklers, SJ, Worship: A Primer in Christian Ritual

The future of liturgy is the future of the Church.... Celebrating the liturgy is itself the primordial source of renewal in the Church. We learn the liturgy by celebrating it. The more we succeed in celebrating the liturgy, the more we'll live the Christian life fully and the more we'll succeed in transforming the Church... The great ideals of the Church are in crisis today in part because there's a crisis in the liturgy. The great ideals of ecumenism, of internal reform of the Church, are all connected. The crisis of the liturgy places in crisis these other great values, because the (Second Vatican) Council wanted to confront these challenges of the mission of the Church, of reform, of dialogue with the world, by beginning with the liturgy. If the liturgy is the source and summit, then we foster in the liturgy the kind of life we need to meet these great goals. If these great movements of the Church are in difficulty today, we have to look to the difficulty in the liturgy.

Body for the Breaking

(cc Atilla1000)

(This) is about getting away from a view of the Church that is very seductive and very damaging - and very popular. This is the view that the Church is essentially a lot of people who have something in common called Christian faith and get together to share it with each other and communicate it to other people 'outside'. It looks a harmless enough view at first, but it is a good way from what the New Testament encourages us to think about the Church - which is that the Church is first of all a kind of space cleared by God through Jesus in which people may become what God made them to be (God's sons and daughters), and that what we have to do about the Church is not first to organise it as a society but to inhabit it as a climate or a landscape. It is a place where we can see properly - God, God's creation, ourselves. It is a place or dimension in the universe that is in some way growing towards being the universe itself in restored relation to God. It is a place we are invited to enter, the place occupied by Christ, who is himself the climate and atmosphere of a renewed universe.... But somehow or other, we all have to undergo a fairly fundamental conversion from seeing revealed truth as a possession to be guarded to seeing it as a place to inhabit; not one bit of territory that needs protection, but the whole world renewed. We shall not proclaim Christ effectively if we are constantly reverting to what makes us anxious rather than what makes us grateful. All I have said so far implies that the priest's task is centrally and essentially to proclaim that world renewed - in personal care, in public teaching, in sacramental action. And the point of such proclamation is to tell the assembly of believers who they are in God's presence, what it is to be involved with and in the priestly act of Jesus Christ and what that means in the daily interactions of human life in terms of reconciliation, judgement, risk and gift...- Rowan Williams, The Christian Priest Today (Friday 28 May 2004)

Broken Elsewhere

Jesuit Corner

Our Identity:What is it to be a Jesuit? It is to know that one is a sinner, yet called to be a companion of Jesus as Ignatius was...(General Congregation 32, Decree 2, #1)

Our Mission:Ours is a service of faith and of the radical implications of faith in a world where it is becoming easier to settle for something less than faith and less than justice. We recognize, along with many of our contemporaries, that without faith, without the eye of love, the human world seems too evil for God to be good, for the good God to exist. But faith recognizes that God is acting, through Christ's love and the power of the Holy Spirit, to destroy the structures of sin which afflict the bodies and hearts of his children. Our Jesuit mission touches something fundamental in the human heart: the desire to find God in a world scarred by sin, and then to live by his Gospel in all its implications... We can now say explicitly that our mission of the service of faith and the promotion of justice must be broadened to include, as integral dimensions, proclamation of the Gospel, (inter-religious) dialogue, and the evangelization of culture. They belong together with the service of faith... because they arise out of an attentiveness to what the Risen Christ is doing as he leads the world to the fullness of God's Kingdom...(General Congregation 34, Decree 2, # 11, 20)

Jesuit Spirituality:(W)e can describe Jesuit spirituality by a set of life-giving and creative tensions. Jesuits are to be men of prayer for whom spiritual means are primary, yet they are asked to use all the natural means at their disposal for their apostolic work. They are to be disciplined men purified of inordinate attachment to worldly values, yet actively engaged in the world; they are, indeed, expected to find God in their activity. They are to be distinguished by their poverty, yet able to carry out their apostolic activities among the wealthy as well as among the poor. Jesuits are to be chaste and to be known as chaste, but are expected to be warm and loving companions at home and on the road, that is outside of cloister. They are to be men of passion, intelligence, initiative and creativity, yet responsive in obedience to superiors. They are to be committed to the people and institutions with which they are involved, yet able to move quickly to whatever place superiors send them. They are expected to be men who believe that God's Spirit communicates directly with individuals, including themselves, and thus who are discerning regarding the movements of their hearts, yet also to be men distinguished by disciplined obedience and fidelity to the institutional church... Jesuit spirituality functions best when these tensions are alive and clearly felt, that is, when Jesuits experience in themselves the pulls of both sides of each polarity. Jesuits are at their best, for example, when they are attracted to spending much time in prayer and have to control that attraction for the sake of their apostolic activity, or when Jesuit theologians experience the tension of being faithful Roman Catholics and of searching for new ways to express the truths of faith in a different age and culture...(Barry & Doherty, Contemplatives in Action: The Jesuit Way)

Quotable Quotes:

As long as we remain in the polarization of conservatives and progressives, of left and right, we will paralyze and block apostolic freedom and response. The Spirit is pushing us forward on the way to him who makes all things new, who will build up with us a new earth and a new heaven, the city of God. Instead of looking suspiciously at one another, let us look together to Christ.- Peter Hans Kolvenbach, SJ

In the document in which we considered our charism, we say that in looking at Jesus we understand who we ought to be. "Remaining" in him. We all know that it is not through guidelines or directives written for others that the Church and the Society will change. They will change if we know how to become new persons.... The Gospel takes us still further. It tells us that everything we have done is for mission.... At the very heart of the sending is the "remaining.".... We are sent because we have entered into Christ and it is Christ who has sent us. The mission has its source... in our encounter with God, but it ends in others. It begins with Christ and it ends with others -- in their joys, in their hopes, in their sufferings...- Adolfo Nicolas, SJ

From General Congregation 36

It is our union with one another in Christ that testifies to the Good News more powerfully than our competences and abilities.... In our individualistic and competitive age, we should remember that the community plays a very special role since it is a privileged place of apostolic discernment.... The Jesuit community is a concrete space in which we live as friends in the Lord. This life together is always at the service of mission, but because these fraternal bonds proclaim the Gospel, it is itself a mission. –Companions in a Mission of Reconciliation and Justice (CMRJ), nn. 7-9.

With the poor, we can learn what hope and courage mean.... In our communities and apostolates, we hear the call to rediscover hospitality to strangers, to the young, to the poor, and to those who are persecuted. Christ himself teaches us this hospitality. –CMRJ, nn. 15-16.

At the heart of Ignatian spirituality is the transforming encounter with the mercy of God in Christ that moves us to a generous personal response. The experience of the merciful gaze of God on our weakness and sinfulness humbles us and fills us with gratitude, helping us to become compassionate ministers to all.... For us Jesuits, compassion is action, an action discerned together. Yet we know that there is no authentic familiarity with God if we do not allow ourselves to be moved to compassion and action by an encounter with the Christ who is revealed in the suffering, vulnerable faces of people, indeed in the suffering of creation. –CMRJ, nn. 19-20.

(T)he Society must respond more decisively to the Church’s call for a new evangelization, giving special emphasis to ministry to and with the young and with families.... A special gift Jesuits and the Ignatian family have to offer to the Church and her mission of evangelization is Ignatian spirituality, which facilitates the experience of God and can therefore greatly help the process of personal and communal conversion. –CMRJ, nn. 22-23.

In many societies, there is an increased level of conflict and polarization, which often gives rise to violence that is all the more appalling because it is motivated and justified by distorted religious convictions. In such situations, Jesuits, along with all who seek the common good, are called to contribute from their religious-spiritual traditions towards the building of peace, on local and global levels. –CMRJ, n. 28.

Pope Francis has emphasized the fundamental connection between the environmental crisis and the social crisis in which we live today. Poverty, social exclusion, and marginalization are linked with environmental degradation. These are not separate crises but one crisis that is a symptom of something much deeper: the flawed way societies and economies are organised. The current economic system with its predatory orientation discards natural resources as well as people. For this reason, Pope Francis insists that the only adequate solution must be a radical one. The direction of development must be altered if it is to be sustainable. We Jesuits are called to help heal a broken world, promoting a new way of producing and consuming, which puts God’s creation at the center.... The multifaceted challenge of caring for our common home calls for a multifaceted response from the Society. We begin by changing our personal and community lifestyles, adopting behaviour coherent with our desire for reconciliation with creation. – CMRJ, nn. 29-30

By sending us to 'those physical and spiritual places which others do not or have difficulty reaching,' the Pope entrusts to us the task to 'build bridges of understanding and dialogue,' according to the best tradition of the Society, in the diversity of its ministries.- Decree With Renewed Fervor and Dynamism, n. 6

To be missioned to this work 'at the New Frontiers of our times' always requires that one also be rooted at the very heart of the Church. This tension, specific to the Ignatian charism, opens the way to true creative fidelity.- Decree With Renewed Fervor and Dynamism, n. 13

In every mission that we carry out, we seek only to be where (Christ) sends us. The grace we receive as Jesuits is to be and to go with him, looking on the world with his eyes, loving it with his heart and entering into its depths with his unending compassion.- Decree on Identity, n. 15

For ultimately, there is no reality that is only profane for those who know how to look. We must communicate this look and provide a pedagogy inspired by the Spiritual Exercises, that carries people - especially the young - into it.- Decree on Identity, n. 10

Our ministries of proclamation of the Word and the celebration of the Life of Christ in the sacraments continue to be fundamental for our mission and our lives together as Jesuits.- Decree on Mission, n. 19

The complexity of the problems we face and the richness of the opportunities offered demand that we engage in building bridges between rich and poor and establishing advocacy links of mutual support between those who hold political power and those who find it difficult to voice their interests. Our intellectual apostolate provides an inestimable help in setting up these bridges, offering us new ways of understanding in depth the mechanism and links among our present problems.- Decree on Mission, n. 28

Jesuit community is not just for mission, it is itself mission.- Decree on Mission, n. 41

In this global context it is important to highlight the extraordinary potential represented by our character as an international and multicultural body. Acting consistently with this character can not only enhance the apostolic effectiveness of our work but in a fragmented and divided world it can witness to the reconciliation in solidarity of all the children of God.- Decree on Mission, n. 43

Faith in Jesus Christ teaches us that self-realization comes from self-giving and that freedom is not so much the power to choose as the power to order our choices toward love. At the same time, love for Jesus Christ and the desire to follow him call us to trusting commitment. Commitment to the Word Incarnate cannot be separated from commitment to the concrete manifestations of the Word that are at the center of our lives, the Church and the Society which exists to serve the Church.- Decree on Obedience, n. 19